1995-05-15 04:00:00 PDT Santiago, Chile -- Douglas Tompkins says he first became fascinated with the environment in Chile during a skiing trip at age 18. So about 30 years later, after earning a fortune as a clothing manufacturer in California, he began buying vast tracts of land in hopes of creating a national park to protect this country's temperate forests.

But in working toward that goal, Tompkins now finds himself at the center of a debate over whether a foreigner should have been allowed to acquire so much land and what he plans to do with it.

Over the past five years, he has bought nearly 700,000 acres between the Rio Negro and Chaiten in the southern province of Palena, after being bought out of ownership in his San Francisco-based Esprit de Corp clothing company and becoming a patron of environmental causes.

The land includes virgin forests, pristine watersheds, high valleys and large tracts of rare larches. Tompkins, now 52, has said he plans to donate the land to a Chilean foundation that he has established to create a national sanctuary.

Yet he has roused the fears of Chilean nationalists, right-wing politicians and leaders of the Catholic Church, who have publicly questioned his motives. Some politicians have called for expropriating the land from Tompkins and revoking his visa. Chile's House of Representatives has announced an investigation into plans for the reserve and proposed legislation that would regulate the sale of land for such purposes.

Although he declined to say exactly how much he has invested, Tompkins said "considerable time, effort, and money" had been put into the project, which he has put on hold for the time being.

"Millions of dollars and time have been spent, and I don't want to give this land to the foundation (merely to) have it expropriated," he said in a telephone interview from his home near Puerto Montt in southern Chile.

Local environmentalists estimate that Tompkins has spent about $12 million. The land area of Chile is 292,000 square miles; Tompkins' land is about 1,050 square miles.

Opposition to his efforts comes at a time when Chile is widely considered one of the easiest and safest countries in Latin America in which to invest because the government has privatized most of its industries and opened its markets.

Criticism from the Catholic Church is based on the mission of another organization under Tompkins, the Foundation for Deep Ecology, which is based in San Francisco and focuses on environmental issues and population control. But he said the Chilean foundation would be autonomous, and he would not even be a voting member of its board.

"The issue has taken on a life of its own due to political and commercial interests," he said. "All we are trying to do is make a sizable national park in an area that is largely untouched, and suddenly I find myself embroiled in a tremendous debate over women's issues and abortion."

Tompkins, meanwhile, has received support from many local environmental agencies and groups, which say they believe that much of the opposition to a park is due to commercial interests in the area.

Environmental groups said Chile has approved more than $870 million of commercial investment in the forestry sector in the past 20 years, but only $17 million for forestry preservation. The groups said that although the Trillium Co., a logging concern based in Seattle, had bought 632,000 acres, or 987 square miles, it has met with no opposition.

"If this investment were anywhere else but Chile, Tompkins would be considered a hero," said Adriana Hoffman, director of Defenders of the Chilean Forest. "But it happened in Chile, where envy and jealously and business interests are institutions."